In accepting his Emmy Award the other night, actor Alec Baldwin said that "when you die, you do not remember a bill that Congress passed, or a decision the Supreme Court made, or an address made by the president. You remember a song. You remember a line from a movie. You remember a play. You remember a book, a painting, a poem."
I took that to be a way of saying that our true legacy reposes in the ideas we leave behind for our children.
Sadly, we find ourselves in another perilous moment for our country, under a government elected by our own people. So we must do what we did in the 1980s, even though we did not do it very well even then.
We must ask ourselves what will happen after the nightmare has given way to daylight, which must happen sooner or later if we are to survive as a country.
It has become vogue to call for the strengthening of institutions that will stop the recurrence of state capture ever again. But our experience has shown that individual political leaders can find ways to undermine those institutions when they see that they could land them or their friends in jail.What is important is the existence of individuals who value democratic institutions. But then that takes us from the Scylla of over-reliance on institutions to the Charybdis of leaving everything to individual conscience. That's a false choice.
However, there are ways in which we can reach a balance between these conflicting approaches to the question of how we might protect ourselves from the next Jacob Zuma.
Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars a few weeks ago, Luis Barroso, a judge on Brazil's Supreme Court, gave an example that might have relevance for South Africa.
As in South Africa, the party-based system in Brazil only ensures that the people end up with the party's choice as their leader, not necessarily someone of their own choosing. However, I asked Barroso how to resolve a conundrum which we also face in South Africa - how do you get the very parliamentarians who benefit from the system to do away with it?
The Brazilian judge did not have a clear answer, but something he said struck a chord: that maybe we should not depend on the politicians to push the system to change. He said that qualifying as prosecutors and judges in Brazil was easier than in most countries. Young people simply have to sit for a public examination, and if they work hard enough they can enter the system.This has created a new generation of professionals who are not afraid to go after corrupt politicians, because they are not indebted to any political figures or political parties.
As a result, one former president (Luiz Lula da Silva) has been convicted of, and another (Dilma Rousseff) has been indicted for, passive corruption. The incumbent, Michel Temer, also faces corruption charges. Also, two former speakers of parliament, several governors and more than 400 MPs have been arrested on corruption-related charges.
We may not necessarily follow the Brazilian example, but what is instructive about it is the importance of a system that uses people with academic clout.
For this to happen here, we would need to reverse a practice the ANC introduced to our country when it took over power, which was to alienate and make enemies of professionals and intellectuals who did not belong to it.
It would rather hand over the running of government machinery to people who had never even seen the inside of a classroom, or left at break-time. The late Es'kia Mphahlele called them "amandla functionaries" because they were more adept at shouting slogans than understanding public policy.
It is indeed ironic that the most important jobs in our society do not require any academic grounding.All you need to do to become an MP is to be a South African citizen and hijack some branches and work your way through the system.
The constitution's framers never anticipated that they would leave the door open for corrupt individuals to ride roughshod into the highest office in the land by manipulating party branches.
Surely, no one can be against introducing academic training for people who are going to be running the country, just as is required for any other job we take? Surely it is reasonable to require such qualifications for people wanting to become mayors, premiers or MPs?
The EFF is setting an example in this regard with Julius Malema, Floyd Shivambu and Mbuyiseni Ndlozi possessing advanced degrees. Hopefully that will cascade down the membership and create an open and tolerant culture for a diversity of ideas.
This is not to say that educated people cannot be a peril to the public - we have enough evidence of that. But surely it is not a big ask to up the skills ante, even if it is not the only requirement for public office?..